Mission control in Houston last made contact with the Orbiter as it reentered Earth's atmosphere at about 207,000 feet over Texas at about 9 a.m. EST, about 16 minutes prior to its scheduled landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Columbia was scheduled to land at 9:16 a.m. EST.

Tracking systems at the Kennedy Space Center did not acquire Columbia as it approached the Florida coast

We will next update this box as soon as more information becomes available.

Well, that's it for NASA. I would expect ISS to be evacuated and abandoned. I don't agree with that; space travel is dangerous but that comes with the territory, but politically I think NASA is out of the manned space business.

I was thinking about that, too. After the Challenger disaster they grounded the shuttle for something like 18 months. They can't do that this time. I could be wrong, but as far as I know the crew of the ISS can't get home any other way.

9-11 has to do with the security involved with the Shuttle program, Rupturedtoad, since the visibility of NASA could be an attractive target. As well, this was the first mission with an Israeli astronaut on board. So, this is referring to the security. They're already trying to trace back causes.

Sad. On CNN's Space section, The article titled "NASA chief pays tribute to Challenger crew" is located right under the article titled, "Shuttle landing in question"

Steveroni with Cheeseroni - I'm talking about if a tire blew within the well. From one of my Air Disaster books there is an account of a Caravelle that crashed somewhere in Europe back in the 60's or so. The cause was determined to be a fire in the wheel well which was caused by the pilots attempting to clear fog from the runway by taxiing with the engines at high power setting while riding the brakes. This caused them to heat up enough that when the plane did take off and retract the gear it, um, did bad things to the airframe.

There is no possibility of that here, obviously, but I just speculate (and of course that is all it can be here) that if a tire blew in the wheel well it would be A Bad Thing. Time will tell.

No ejector seats Publikwerks, and at that altitude and speed it would be irrelevant.

I live in Central Florida (pity me, please) and we normally hear the sonic booms - they rattle the whole house - when the shuttle lands (by the way, it's great fun to watch the cat when that happens). I knew the shuttle was supposed to land and I kept waiting and waiting for the booms and switched on CNN when I didn't hear them.

Also on board are 13 rats, eight garden orb weaver spiders, five silkworms and three cocoons, four Medaka fish eggs that will develop in space, three carpenter bees, 15 harvester ants and an assortment of fish.

Heck, there are probably people posting here who weren't even alive when the Challenger exploded. I agree that it shouldn't be shocking, Doctechnical, but the fact is that lives are lost so infrequently in the U.S. space program that it's shocking thus far.

So the pieces that are falling would be going faster than a bullet shot out of a rifle. That's just frightening. Makes you respect the guys that go up there for the pioneers that they are a little more.

Keep reloading the link that is the origin of this thread, Dapper_Dan:

1440 GMT (9:40 a.m. EST)

During a mission status news conference yesterday, Entry Flight Director Leroy Cain was asked about any possible damage to the shuttle's thermal tiles during launch. The tiles are what protect the shuttle during the fiery reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

Tracking video of launch shows what appears to be a piece of foam insulation from the shuttle's external tank falling away during ascent and hitting the shuttle's left wing near its leading edge.

But Cain said engineers "took a very thorough look at the situation with the tile on the left wing and we have no concerns whatsoever. We haven't changed anything with respect to our trajectory design. It will be a nominal, standard trajectory."